I am kind of headed in a specific direction, but there are a few other issues I want to explore before I get there.
First - the quest for status. Yes, we as a society out to prize rare traits (like stratgic thinking). But when we prize something like that, and offer benefits...there's an incentive to try and pretend you have the skills even if you really don't. Or, in my less pessimistic moods, to believe you have the skills and that nobody else can truly do better...even if you it's not true.
Self-interest at work.
This is what concerns me about various reports over the years, the ones that discuss cheating in college. I never paid someone to write a paper for me. The idea that some students do, and get away with it? Pretty awful. It means we're getting people who aren't really the smartest, who don't really have the skills they claim to have...but are simply better at cheating than anyone else.
And cheating is corrosive. The more people see others get ahead by cheating, the more likely they are to do it themselves. After all, how else can they compete? It's like a sports competition where the winners aren't really the best at working together as a team, aren't really the fastest, and don't really provide the best defense. They're just the ones who were better at bribing the refs, or cheating behind the refs backs.
If this goes on too long, and too successfully, the only people who 'win' are the ones who know how to game the system (like the former KGB in the Soviet Union, perhaps?)
First - the quest for status. Yes, we as a society out to prize rare traits (like stratgic thinking). But when we prize something like that, and offer benefits...there's an incentive to try and pretend you have the skills even if you really don't. Or, in my less pessimistic moods, to believe you have the skills and that nobody else can truly do better...even if you it's not true.
Self-interest at work.
This is what concerns me about various reports over the years, the ones that discuss cheating in college. I never paid someone to write a paper for me. The idea that some students do, and get away with it? Pretty awful. It means we're getting people who aren't really the smartest, who don't really have the skills they claim to have...but are simply better at cheating than anyone else.
And cheating is corrosive. The more people see others get ahead by cheating, the more likely they are to do it themselves. After all, how else can they compete? It's like a sports competition where the winners aren't really the best at working together as a team, aren't really the fastest, and don't really provide the best defense. They're just the ones who were better at bribing the refs, or cheating behind the refs backs.
If this goes on too long, and too successfully, the only people who 'win' are the ones who know how to game the system (like the former KGB in the Soviet Union, perhaps?)
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